whoopdido

I enjoyed it. It was better than good, but not great. That equates to 4 out of 5 for me. As others have said, the entire movie had vintage Spielberg all over it. Pretty much a mish mash of Goonies, ET, Close Encounters and Jurassic Park and then throw Cloverfield in there too for good measure.

I agree that the creature was pretty disappointing. I really had no idea what to expect, but I remember saying months and months ago that if the creature could fit into a train car and have a hard time getting out of it, then it's not going to be too much of a badass. I remember at one time people were thinking it would be similar to the Cloverfield monster. In any event, I guess I didn't know what the creature was going to look like but I was underwhelmed. I thought it was pretty obvious how it was going to turn out... but there were a few twists and turns in there.

By the way

I have a question about the end.

But anyway, it was good. I agree that it really wasn't original, but it made an unorginal plot interesting at least. I just wish the creature was somehow better.

dcrw6

It was alright. It's problem was it didn't know whether it wanted to commit to either being a full-on monster movie or being a Spielberg-heartwarming movie. The ending was kind of a mess with stuff happening for really no reason other than to have a bunch of cliches mashed together. Like


Some of the emotional beats at the end didn't seem warranted either, mainly because of it trying to imply the monster meant more for these kids then the movie actually showed us. I think the blatant hero worship hurt the movie and left it without its own voice.

Same goes for the monster design. A mess of placing pieces of other monsters together, including parts of the Cloverfield monster, and then not lighting it so it's even more unspecific. It all equals out to being just average I suppose.

Shannon Nutt

riotinmyskull

^ yep.

BearFan

I enjoyed this, a good summer fun movie. It was funny in parts, I thought the characters were good. All the kids did a good job (especially the main kid and the girl) .... It had the vibe of a 1980s summer blockbuster combined with modern effects. I think they pulled it off really well.

Shinobi

Patman

I wanted to like this film, but after you get past the nostalgic look at 1979 (everything, the cars, the lack of smartphones, the use of super 8 film for childhood movie-making, etc), the film's storyline has a rather meandering focus due to it keeping the reveal of the thing in the train firmly underwraps until the last 1/3 of the film, and then it just never pays off in the end, except for some orchestrated sentimentality that isn't quite earned through the first 2/3 of the film, mainly the subplot between Joe and his father after his mother perished unexpectedly, and each trying to find a way to get past the heartache.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.

dcrw6

I guess it doesn't matter too much, there were other bigger issues with the film that bothered me more than that.

CKMorpheus

kstublen

Just got back from seeing it and I loved it. Honestly, I'm surprised it's getting sort of mixed reactions on the board. Obviously it is an homage to a lot of Spielberg's earlier movies and productions, but I thought that was one of the movie's biggest strengths. They really captured the charm and heart of those '80s and early '90s movies. My only complaint would be that the alien design didn't seem all that inspired and when we did see the alien the lighting was pretty bad, which didn't help.

I think the best thing about this movie though was the kids. All of the child actors were well-defined and brought something different to the table. More importantly, they were kids; they reacted to situations like kids, they talked like kids, and they acted like kids. All of them conveyed a great deal of emotion and consistently made me laugh, especially the kid with the explosives.

And speaking of the kids, the reason this movie worked was because the focus was on a group of friends and a small town community using a disaster as the backdrop. I never felt like anything was just an excuse to show off some fancy CGI or blow something up; all of that was cool and the scenes were intense, but I never felt like that was the primary focus. The train explosion was an incredible scene, not because of the tremendous scope of it all, but because I'm watching these kids that I've already started to like in a life-and-death situation, doing the best they can to stay alive. Because the focus was on well-developed characters instead of action scenes, everything in the movie felt like it mattered to me and I cared where these kids ended up.

It was also nice seeing a lot of character actors getting some time to shine in the movie; they all took a back seat to the children of course, but I can't imagine some really big name stars would have been willing to do that, so I'm glad they didn't cast people that might otherwise draw attention away from the kids.

Supermallet

Really? What about the kid who looked kind of like the main kid but wore an overcoat and had two lines in the whole film?

islandclaws

Who? The actor or the nerd? I thought the main group (main kid, director kid, braces kid, girl crush) were all well-defined. I don't think we needed to fall in love with everyone. There is an alien and a lot of military stuff going on, too.

Supermallet

The main character and the girl are well defined. The director kid is one note, as is the braces kid. The other kids have no personality at all, except to swear at each other a bunch. They're just set dressing.

I'm just arguing against the statement that the kids were all well-defined and each brought something different to the film.

Mr. Cinema

Well, my #1 most anticipated Summer movie fell far short of my unfortunate high expectations. The showing I went to was in theater 8.

I thought this had a terrific setup, but the payoff was definitely lacking. It certainly did have some suspense, particularly I also thought the dramatic part of worked fairly well, but once we get the full reveal of "it" and we figure out the plot, the whole thing just falls flat, at least for me.

I also agree with Shannon's post #53.

I'd call it "Decent 8".

kstublen

Are you talking about the kid that kept throwing up? Or the one who stayed behind toward the end?

I don't think the director was one note at all. Yeah, he was bossy when it came to his movies, but did you see his home life? It was so hectic and crazy that he just wanted to have some control over something in his life. Not to mention he sort of opened up at one point in the movie and I think that gave him a little depth.

The braces kid may have been one note with respect to always wanting to blow things up, but he's just a kid. He found something he enjoyed and sort of obsessed about it; kids tend to do that. At the very least he put on a very tough exterior and then showed a weaker, more scared side at times, not to mention a willingness to follow rather than take charge.

When I say well-defined, I mean you get a pretty good sense of who they are and what their role is in the group of friends. To some that might appear one-note, but I think it's a fairly accurate depiction of kids that age; once kids find a place when they're younger they sort of stick to it and don't change or grow overnight. All of these kids felt like real kids to me and seemed like an actual group of friends, complete with some taking advantage of others and picking on one another.

kstublen

I could've sworn...

Supermallet

I meant the kid who stayed behind, although "Glasses puker" didn't add much either.

The director kid could have been more, but I feel they bungled the big emotional scene. Then again, the film oversimplifies all emotions to the point where even infants can see the big sweeping statements. I mean, the film opens with two characters blatantly discussing the emotional state of the main characters, and the two dads reconcile in about three sentences at the end.

Mr. Cinema

Oh, okay. I obviously didn't hear during that part, but that's a sensible reason.

islandclaws

IIRC, the alien was running around town trying to make its way back to the lair, and the Army was firing at it. Problem is, the super magnet it had built was causing every shot to be a misfire, so the town suddenly became engulfed. I didn't see it as random.

kstublen

What's so wrong having two adults, at a wake, discussing the emotional state of a kid who has just lost his mother? That definitely seems like it would take place in real life.

As for the reconciliation between the fathers, why does that need to be anything more than a brief exchange? They're both worried about their kids, they don't really like one another, and they both know it was an accident. What more needed to be said?

Supermallet

The problem was that it was the first thing in the movie, and it felt so exposition-y. We don't even know these characters but we're being told how they're feeling. Don't tell us, show us. Especially after that opening shot which so eloquently set up the situation without a word of dialogue. It was lazy, especially since those two characters never had a meaningful line in the film again.

As for the reconciliation between the dads, the whole movie set up just how much they loathed each other. The movie starts with Kyle Chandler hauling off the other guy in handcuffs, and it continues throughout the film. And then they have a two second conversation and everything's understood. The movie had real conflicts but chose instead to drown them in favor of the alien, who was not very interesting.

Groucho

Only J.J. Abrams could manage to overuse lens flare in a movie shot at night. In rural Ohio. During a power outage.

Throwing Copper

I totally agree with this. The final third of the film was nothing to write home about.

I really enjoyed the kids and especially the lead boy and Elle Fanning. I could've watched those two all day.

Loved the nostalgic feel of the late 1970s as well. I thought the scenes of them filming their own little movie and then the chaos that ensued was also great.

The "thing on the train" was such a disappointment. That ruined the movie for me. I'll still catch it again on video though.

***1/2 stars for me

Throwing Copper

+1

dcrw6

I think the funny thing is I feel like it would have been a far greater movie if it had nothing to do with a monster and just focused on being a dramedy about the same kids in the same time period making a movie and dealing with the same issues. It was only during those moments did I really enjoy the movie.